Title: Five Times the Doctor Thought of Rose
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: Takes place between the events of Doomsday and the goodbye on Bad Wolf Bay. As the Doctor searches for a pinhole in time through which to contact Rose, memories of her lay scattered throughout the TARDIS.
Word Count: 3,963
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters, but I'm eternally grateful to the ones who did.
The battle was over but the noise still rang in his ears. The Doctor had left the Torchwood Institute labs and returned to his TARDIS, still in storage. It was just as he'd left it, still bigger on the inside, except when he stepped inside now it felt positively cavernous. His head was screaming like metal on metal but the TARDIS was silent as a tomb. It felt like it had been forever since he stood at this console with Rose and their surprise stowaway Jackie, when really it had all happened too quickly to comprehend.
Daleks.
Always Daleks, taking everything from him, everything he ever cared about, again and again like a child's recurring nightmare. But this time he had banished them along with the cyberman into the Void, and hopefully that was the last he'd ever see of them, though he knew in his hearts that couldn't possibly be true.
His hands rested lightly on the controls. He wanted nothing more than to run, as fast and as far as he could. Escape on another adventure -- it didn't matter which one – but he knew he could never run far enough to escape her memory.
Because she was everywhere.
Everywhere he looked, he saw Rose. She walked through the door, she sat on the chair, she fell back laughing. He imagined her standing again by his side, her blonde hair falling down around her face in sheets as she looked at the console monitor. He could smell her perfume, hear her voice, and then he stopped as the pain became so sharp he thought he would burst. He closed his eyes tight to stop the burn and when he opened them again her ghostly image had gone just as she now was.
He had run from Daleks, run from cybermen, but if ever he felt like running it was now.
"But I'd rather run towards you than away from you," he said to no one in particular.
So the Doctor decided to scour the universe for a breach in time, the tiniest of tears, anything that would allow him to reach her, if for no other reason than to say goodbye. They never really got a proper goodbye; that was reason enough to want to find her. It could take forever, it was like looking for a pinhole in millions of yards of fabric, but he was all right with that.
It gave him a reason to keep going.
The Doctor took his jacket off and swung it over the jump seat. As he did, a slip of paper fell from his pocket and to the floor. He turned back and picked it up, feeling the thick parchment between his fingers. The fine calligraphy was slightly smudged from being handled and read too many times.
Reinette's letter. He had forgotten it was in this suit. He had very nearly chosen a life with Madame Du Pompadour, but then he was reminded of Rose's indignation as though it had vibrated off the page itself. Rose had been happy to see him at first, relieved that he was safe and had returned to her after over five hours of waiting in the abandoned ship. It wasn't until later in the TARDIS after Mickey had gone to sleep that the realization of what he had done must have sunk in and her anger took over.
She had been coy about it of course, that had always been her way. The Doctor had been adjusting some settings when Rose emerged and began to slowly pace the control room behind him, dragging her fingers along the TARDIS' organically shaped columns, like she was out for a casual stroll.
"We didn't think you were coming back," she said quietly.
The Doctor turned around, surprised, "Of course you did. You waited."
"We waited because we didn't know what else to do," she revealed, looking up at him as she stopped pacing. "We were stranded."
The Doctor smiled. "I was the one who was stranded, remember? You had the TARDIS. And Mickey."
"Well we don't know how to fly it do we?" she snapped, full voice. "You went there knowing you couldn't come back. You were leaving Mickey and me to die, do you realize that? You just left us. For her. What exactly were you doing there?"
He froze, shocked. This was the last thing he expected. "I don't know," he said, feeling his own anger rise, "saving her life?"
"What, with banana daiquiris?" she said with a mocking laugh.
This time the Doctor had to laugh. "What's this really about? Are you jealous?"
"Of course not," she shrugged, looking away again, "you can dance with whomever you like, though you do like your blondes don't you?"
"Steady on Rose," he said, moving towards her, "I don't know what you want me to say."
"Nothing," she sighed, her anger fading, "nothing at all. I had no right to expect anything I suppose. Though if you liked her so much why didn't you ask her to come along?"
"Well I thought about it, but when I went back…" He started and then wanted to slap himself at the sight of Rose's cold expression returning. Over nine hundred years and he'd never understand women, except that he knew when to apologise, even when he had no idea what he'd done.
"Oh, never mind," he said. "She's not here and you are, that's what matters. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left you, but they were going to take her head and I couldn't see any other way to save her. I knew you'd be all right, you had Mickey and the TARDIS. I know how capable you are."
She kept her pained face on for a second more and then broke a small smile that made the Doctor relax as well.
"Apology accepted," she said, "But don't you ever run off and leave me like that again."
With his finger he made two x's over his chest. "Cross my hearts. So tell me, what is it that you're really asking for Rose Tyler, a commitment? Some sort of promise?"
Rose looked hopeful, "I know it can't be forever, I get that, but maybe just… for as long as we've got."
"All right, you've got it," he said effortlessly. "No one else but you. For as long as we've got."
The Doctor returned the letter to its place in his suit pocket. Really after the way Rose had reacted meeting Sarah Jane he should have seen it coming. He just hadn't thought. He knew when he had gone to save Reinette there was no way back, and yet he had done it without even so much as a goodbye. Rose had deserved a goodbye at the very least.
She deserved one now.
He turned to the console to make his first computations and begin his methodical search. It involved controls he hadn't used in years. He went around the console twice and then stopped when he spotted a gold badge, lying between two knobs. It was the same colour as the buttons around it and had nearly blended in, which explained why he hadn't noticed it there until now. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand.
Gaugaros 6 was being frozen to death by creatures that lived in subzero temperatures way too low for any other species to survive. Bit by bit the planet turned to ice through some bizarre terraforming process of the invading Dreen. The Gaugarans had the ability to reverse it, but the controls lay in a room that was already frozen over, and the Dreen had even earlier than that destroyed any protective suits from the planet that would have allowed them to survive. The Dreen didn't want there to be survivors and they had planned their invasion well.
An emergency door was closing as they got there, sealing off the chamber and their only hope of survival. The nearest one to the opening that might still make it through was Rose. As the Doctor was busy working out a plan of action in his head Rose took one look at him and then dove for the door, rolling under and in just before it closed.
The Doctor screamed, "Rose! No!!"
But it was too late, she was inside. The Chancellor of Gaugaros told him that a human could survive no more than fifteen seconds in that environment, as frigid as open space. Rose would need at least that long to enter the code that would initiate global warming and stop the terraforming from taking place. She'd never make it.
He tried opening the door with the sonic screwdriver but it was deadlocked. It wouldn't open until the emergency had passed and the area was declared safe for habitation once again. There was a tiny window in the door, as unbreakable as the rest of it but at least he could see her. She was too distracted to notice him, but within seconds of entering, she appeared blue and fell to her knees.
Helpless, he watched as she struggled to reach the controls.
"Someone get this door open! She's going to die in there!" he called out.
But there was nothing anyone could do. And Rose had known it going in there. If she failed they would all die.
The room in which the Doctor stood with the Gaugaros council was getting colder. The Doctor pounded on the door until his hands grew numb, shouting useless words through obstinate glass and steel. Rose pushed more buttons, fell to the ground and then pulled herself up again at the last console where a large lever waited to be pulled. She grabbed it and with her full weight she brought it down with her towards the floor before losing consciousness.
"Rose!!" The Doctor screamed again.
And then he felt the warming. He felt it through the steel as the emergency lock disengaged and the door slid upwards of its own accord. The Doctor ran inside, his coat already free. He wrapped her in it, carrying her to the warmer outer room.
"Someone help me quick! I need a tub of warm water!" he ordered, laying her down on a bench while others scrambled to assist. She was stone cold, a thin layer of frost on her skin, her teeth chattering.
"Rose, can you hear me? You've done it Rose. You fixed it," he told her, stroking her hair, pressing her hands against his chest to warm them. She shook and her eyelids fluttered, then closed again.
"Doctor?" she whispered.
He smiled. "You were magnificent."
It was several days on the planet until she was fully recovered. The Doctor never left her side. And on the day they left, the Gaugaran Chancellor awarded Rose a gold medallion for her service to their planet.
His brave, brave Rose, he thought as he looked at the medallion now. How ironic that it was her bravery that had pulled them apart in the end. She could have held on easily at Canary Wharf, but she let go to push the lever back down, and made sure that the Daleks and cyberman were sucked into the Void, very nearly sacrificing herself to do it. It was just like her. The Doctor put the coin back on the console, but left it standing up at the top of the panel where he could see it.
He was nearly done with the calculations for the first sweep of this galaxy. Entering the last coordinates he started up the TARDIS and then sat back in the jump seat to await the results. Arms stretched out over the railing, he pulled back when he felt something soft. In his hands was a small blue top and he couldn't help but smile.
Rose was always leaving her things about. Clothes, books, cup of tea -- for the first time in his memory the Doctor would find himself tripping over anything. He had kept the TARDIS neat as a pin when he was on his own, and despite having countless companions over the years most were just a bit too timid to make themselves completely at home. But Rose was different. She had always been different from the others in so many ways. Not long after they left Earth again last Christmas he started finding bits and pieces everywhere.
"Why don't you ever hang up your clothes," he asked her one day, perhaps more sharply than he intended, picking up jumpers and socks from the floor again and tossing them into a pile on the bench beside her.
"You're one to talk," she said over the book she was reading, "always throwing that coat anywhere but the coat rack."
"At least it's never on the floor," he countered, "Were you like this in your mother's house?"
Rose looked up and laughed. "Oh is that it? Is it getting a bit too domestic in here for you? I'll be hanging curtains next you wait."
The Doctor looked around at the TARDIS walls and shuddered. "Curtains?" he muttered. No, he decided, she's just winding me up. If he had thought Rose was that sort he would drop her off at the nearest space station to hitch her own way back. But Rose was already putting out the white flag.
"All right I'll start putting my things away so long as I get to keep one thing out like you do," Rose said.
"Fine," he agreed, relieved. "One thing. And not on the floor."
With her book still in one hand Rose reached over to the pile the Doctor had made and grabbed the first thing on it, her blue top that she had worn the day before. Flinging it over the rail as casually as you please, she quickly returned to her reading.
"No curtains," she said, "I promise. Although I had been thinking that a reading lamp might not be bad."
The Doctor put the top back over the rail, though he could never get it to look quite as haphazard as she had done. It was funny how you could find yourself missing the things that once drove you mad. He would give anything to see her things all over the floor now. He wanted it so badly he bent over and searched under the seat for another sock, a hairbrush, anything.
All he found was a crushed paper party hat. He had forgotten all about it.
The Doctor was on his back under the console, working on an upgrade to the TARDIS. Rose sat next to him and watched, handing him tools as he instructed.
"Have you got a birthday?" Rose asked him.
He glanced at her, not sure he heard her right. "A birthday? Do you mean like what humans do with cake and balloons and all that?"
"Yeah, that's right," she said.
"No," said the Doctor. "Hand me that stabilizer over there."
Rose did and continued, "Well everyone's got a birthday, even if you've never had a party. When were you born?"
"Ooh, that's a tough one," he replied as he worked, "I wasn't born really, not like you. I was sort of…loomed. Well, it's all a bit complicated."
"It always is with you," she smiled, "Right then, how about all those times you've regenerated, aren't they like birthdays?"
He handed her back the part and pointed at the one next to it before responding. "Yeah, sort of, but they're also the day you die so we don't exactly celebrate it."
"Yeah, I can see that," she said, thinking. "Right, you need a proper birthday then. Let's give you one."
He looked at her and smiled. "All right," he said, amused and playing along, "When should it be?"
"I suppose we could just pick a date, when do you want it?" she asked. "Any particular season? Do you have a lucky number? Or do you remember a time when you were so happy it was like being reborn, like the whole world was new again?"
"Yeeeah, everybody has days like that I suppose. Here take this," he handed her the sonic screwdriver, "nearly done."
"Well name one, go on," she said.
He paused and then shook his head, "Nah, it's silly, you pick it."
"It's your birthday you should decide," she argued, "Come on what were you thinking?"
The Doctor finished with the work and replaced the access panel. Crawling out from the console he started to collect his tools. He worked methodically and for a moment it seemed as though he was going to change the subject as he often did when topics became uncomfortable.
But then he spoke, eyes still cast down at the objects in his hands, "Well if you must know…it was…well, it's the only day that makes sense really, can't be any other...its…the day I met you."
Rose smiled. "26th of March then, so set the date on the TARDIS, pick a location and let's go celebrate your birthday."
He looked at her and then with a mad grin he bounced to the storage compartment to put the tools away and darted back to the controls, "All right, and when we're done we can celebrate yours somewhere. Though I'm sorry I haven't gotten you anything."
Her response was so small he almost missed it as he spun the wheel to select a mystery planet at random, feeling the thrill of discovery all over again. But then he felt a light touch on his shoulder and he knew she was speaking to him.
"Yes you have," she said.
Rose had always managed to take an ordinary day and turn it on its head. She could find fun in anything, making even the most mundane tasks enjoyable. She would take that ability with her wherever she went; he just wished he could experience it again for himself.
The TARDIS sounded a chime to indicate that the sweep was completed. He bounded back up and studied the results. Negative. There was nothing here, not the slightest indication that a parallel universe existed just alongside his own like a neighbouring flat. Before he could get discouraged he quickly entered new coordinates for the next quadrant of space and started again. He would do this for as long as it took, though he knew that realistically that could mean a very very long time.
Perhaps there was a way to speed up the process, he thought. If he boosted the sensors to work quicker and on several quadrants at once…yes, that might work, but it would take some tinkering. He knelt down and removed one of the grates that made up the TARDIS deck. Stepping down into the very heart of the machine he removed some wiring and began making the modifications. He dismantled the accelerator and a part fell to the floor below. He reached down to retrieve it, and instead found a small blue stone.
He rubbed the smooth flat surface with his thumb. Rose had given him this. He never told her but he'd lost it soon after while working on the TARDIS one day. He didn't want to upset her because she had been so excited when she had found it, at an outdoor market on Quaxis.
"Look what I've got from that stall there," she said as she came running over, handing him what looked like an ordinary skipping stone.
He felt the weight of it in his hand and noticed the telltale signs of an energy signature. It was as if the stone was humming, though he doubted Rose could sense it.
"What is it?" he asked her.
"They're called companion stones," she said triumphantly, as though that said it all. "Well I couldn't resist, could I?"
She held up her hand and the Doctor now saw that she had an identical stone of her own. They were a pair. He was about to tell her that she had merely been taken in by an astute and likely telepathic market seller, when she reached over and closed his hand around his stone and then did the same with hers.
She explained, "You hold it and think of the other person with the stone and they glow, see?"
The Doctor looked down and opened his hand. The stones were indeed glowing a brilliant cerulean. That was clever, but he doubted that thinking had anything to do with it. It was just a simple energy transfer through some matching frequency link created between the two objects – touch one and they both light up. It was little more than a child's toy really, a fad no doubt like all planets had, but the Doctor would no sooner tell Rose that than he would tell a five year old that Father Christmas was just her father.
Rose was looking at her glowing stone as if she had just caught a firefly in her hand, marvelling.
"This way if we're ever separated we can touch it and the other person knows they're still there and all right," she said.
The Doctor smiled at the sentiment, indulging her. They faced danger together more times than he cared to count, and if these small trinkets gave Rose some comfort than who was he to deny her. He put his stone in his pocket, took her hand and they walked on. The truth was after that he had forgotten about it, thinking in his arrogance that he wouldn't need it, that he would never allow them to be separated.
He looked at the stone now, cold and dead in his hand. He pressed it tight in his fist and then looked again. It was dark. He knew it was unlikely that the glow would carry to another dimension even if by some miracle the thing worked.
"Ridiculous," he said to himself. "It's just a toy."
He was about to fling it and then stopped. For some mad reason he felt like trying again. He felt silly doing it, but this time he held a clear image of Rose in his mind, willing the stones to glow. He stood that way for a long time, squeezing the stone, imagining her soft hand, seeing Rose at his side on every planet and in every time. He clenched down white knuckled until his fist hurt and then his jaw and then released only when he felt a tear escape and run down his cheek.
The stone flickered once, or it might have done, perhaps he had imagined it. More likely he had just charged it himself with his own time energy who could tell, but there was definitely a small vibration he could detect now, as though the stone were coated with delicate peach fuzz.
Whether it worked with the power of consciousness or not, there was no doubt the stones were connected. Could he use that somehow, just as Rose had once suggested? Could he follow the energy signature to the weak spot in time he had been searching for, use it to guide him in toward the stone's sister like a lighthouse?
He placed the stone carefully on the console and got to work.
He knew it was working when the glow went from a flicker to a faint steady light, and then grew stronger as he travelled. The next day he found it -- the tiniest of tears in the fabric of space. He could hardly believe his luck. It wasn't large enough to travel through in either direction but with enough power he could send a message. He would need to set off a supernova to do it, but that was no problem. That was nothing. He could contact Rose.
The Doctor checked the charts and set his sights on destroying the nearest star.